Professor Ronan Lyons OBE

Ronan Lyons, Officer of British Empire (OBE) and Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales (FLSW), is Professor of Public Health at Swansea University, Honorary Consultant in Public Health with Public Health Wales NHS Trust and Adjunct Professor at Monash University, Australia. Professor Lyons is Research Director and lead for Population Health Research for Health Data Research UK and Co-Director of the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) system. His research focuses on the use of routine data in cohorts, trials, and the evaluation of natural experiments and complex interventions.

He led the development of anonymised total population cohorts in the SAIL system as a platform for evaluating interventions and policies. He is principal investigator of the Medical Research Council (MRC) funded ‘Controlling COVID-19 through enhanced population surveillance and intervention (Con-COV): a platform approach’ and ‘Application of machine learning to discover new multimorbidity phenotypes associated with poorer outcomes’ collaborations. He is also Associate Director for the MRC’s Dementias Research Platform UK and a senior investigator in the Economic and Social Research Council funded Administrative Data Research Partnership and the National Centre for Population Health and Wellbeing Research.

Professor Lyons is particularly interested in the neglected field of injury prevention and control and is involved in many of the world's largest observational, interventional and policy relevant injury research studies. Since 2012, he has chaired the US National Centres for Health Statistics’ International Collaborative Effort on Injury Statistics and Methods.

He was awarded an OBE in 2021 for services to research, innovation and public health.

In the news:

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on incidence of long-term conditions in Wales (March 2023)

Health and Care Research Wales invests in leaders across Wales to shape the research of the future (April 2022)

SAIL Databank Co-Director recognised in data industry influence awards (February 2021)